


drivers license

by kekinkawaii



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29237601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kekinkawaii/pseuds/kekinkawaii
Summary: It wasn’t his idea to not get a license back in high school. He just never really had the time. Never really saw the point.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 8





	drivers license

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song by Olivia Rodrigo. In case you missed it, heed the MCD warning (and angst tag) and consider yourself warned. No hard feelings if that's not your thing!  
> Alternatively, if you eat angst for breakfast, buckle up <3

Deep breath. He could do this.

Key in the ignition, twist.

The kick of the engine, the rumble through the seats like a contented cat’s purr, or maybe a predator instead by the way it beaded sweat along his hairline, palms damp around the steering wheel. Castiel flexed his fingers and inhaled the gritty, plasticky, new-car scent of rubber and leather and long-lingering dust.

Press down on the gas. Switch gears. The car lurched to life; too hard, ease up on the pressure just a touch and off he went, pulling out of the driveway and meandering around a clumsy three-point turn. In a moment, he was cruising down the street feeling the gravel and rock salt crunching under the tiles. It was still cold inside the car but the heating was on full blast.

_‘Long as the front goes through, the rest will follow._

_I don’t think it works like that. The car is not a TARDIS._

_Well, jeez, Cas, have a little faith, will you?_

He picked a good time to head out today, six-sevenish in the evening when the sun was sinking slowly down the horizons and the families were huddled in their warm happy homes with warm happy dinners, and the streets were bare, snowy, and scarce. There was a freezing-rain warning on the weather forecast a few days ago that had collided with his driver’s test and it had to be rescheduled to yesterday. By then the sleet had melted into dappled salt-eaten craters and he’d been so nervous his palms slipped on the gear shift and he left sweat stains on the steering wheel, but at the end of the hour his instructor smiled, patted his back, and he drove the whole way home by himself and only nearly got into a fender-bender at the roundabout before his street.

The faint prickling doubt wiggled in his mind that, perhaps, she’d only given him the green light because the person who’d exited the car before his test had started was a splotchy-faced teen who was years younger than him, and they’d passed—she must’ve been trying to save his dignity. He had, after all, been the oldest in line that morning.

_I see how it is. You’re using me. For my car._

_Of course. That’s the only reason I’m friends with you at all._

_Ice-cold._

He’d gotten home and called his parents because he didn’t know who else to call. The conversation was awkward, stilted like a stuttering record—good job, finally went unspoken but hung in the air like a constellation. You can finally drive yourself to your classes, his mom said. And that one used bookstore downtown that takes a million years to bus to, and you wouldn’t even need to.

Wouldn’t even need to hitch a ride from anyone.

Could just get in his car, all his own, all by himself, and drive there.

The sun glinted in his eyes and for an instant he was blinded. He blinked, panic shooting down his spine suddenly at the idea of swerving, sliding, hydroplaning across the roads and swivelling into one of the nice-looking trees planted along the sidewalks, car crumpling like tinfoil and head smashed in in an instant just like that.

Then he blinked again and it was gone and he pursed his lips—was nothing but the sun. Stupid. He couldn’t afford to be distracted while driving. No texting, no talking. No music. Absolutely no music. He pulled the visor down and kept driving down the street, turning onto the main road where the ice turned gritty.

It wasn’t his idea to not get a license back in high school. He just never really had the time. Never really saw the point.

Not really his idea to get one, now, either, not like there was a point, not like he was having any particular problem with taking the bus every day and staring out the dusty windows at the streetlamps flashing by. He just found himself taking the bus one day and staying for two stops longer and walking the ten extra minutes down to the driving school. He’d signed up on the spot. His instructor had been a redhead, Charlie her name was—bright smiles like sunshine and a perchance for spontaneous high-fives whenever he remembered to check his rearview mirrors.

 _You forgot to check the rearview mirror again, dumbass. Do you_ wanna _get rammed by a truck?_

_There aren’t any trucks on this street. It’s illegal._

_Right, smartass. Just—check your rearview mirror, ‘kay? Always. I forgot to check my rearview mirror once and scraped up Baby’s paint job. Dad nearly killed me. Besides, aren’t you the one who’s always so anal about that safety shit,_ Dean don’t play the music so loud in the car— _if my music’s got your panties in such a twist then check your goddamn rearview mirror if you don’t wanna get hurt. Hey, where are you goin’?_

_Ice cream._

_Why?_

_Because I want ice cream and the movie doesn’t start until eight._

_Huh. You’re something else, you know that? And—_

_Yes, Dean, I’m checking my rearview mirror._

Castiel checked his rearview mirror. There was no one there.

He kept driving until he turned into the suburbs. The houses here were quieter, quaint. More like homes. Shrubbery and dried-up flower bushes lined the staircases to their doors, and even though it was February already there were still Christmas lights hanging across the roofs.

There was a For Lease sign on one of the houses, the sign still stoically standing straight despite the hills of snow surrounding it. There was so much frost covering it that the text was hardly legible. The house looked well-worn, well-loved. One day, Castiel would’ve pulled over to give it a slow, thorough eye. Take in the wilted rose bush and mini rainbow painted rocks by the porch. 

Today, he kept driving. Past the streets, until the houses grew sparse and the ice grew heftier under his tires. The car jostled and bumped; warm, now, the air cuddled around him.

 _I don’t think I’ll buy a house. More of a lone wanderer,_ On The Road _kinda guy, y’know? Butch and Sundance style._

_I want a house. I think it would be nice to settle down and have a place of my own._

_Oh. Really?_

_Really._

_Well. I guess it would be cool to have a home base._

_What are you saying, Dean?_

_I’m saying that I’m willing to compromise._

The houses ended and dissolved into a gravel path with tall, untrimmed pines. Castiel turned and felt a pounding start up in his temples and the sweat gathering at the base of his neck. It was too hot, now, but he couldn’t take his hands off the wheel, now—he turned, slowly, hands on ten and two o’clock, gripping so tightly his knuckles grated.

He reverse-parked because studies have shown that reverse parking was safer, if not more difficult to execute. The car eased its way into the parking spot and sunk a few inches into the snowdrift that had steadily gathered and crept its way in.

Switch gears, shut off the ignition. The purr sputtered and died.

Castiel got out of the car. The cold air was a bright shock and it bit harshly at the skin under his eyes. The snow was trampled under his boots and dirty with mud.

He was going to get his license at one point during high school, he really was. Was planning on doing it after sophomore year—then after college applications—then after exams. Then, then, then, then he never really saw the point because he didn’t need a car for himself anyway. Not back then.

Not with Dean and his Impala shining like starlight, lovingly polished within an inch of her life, the scent of leather seats leather jacket and lingering, guilty cigarettes hanging in the confined space; halfway hanging out the window to wave at him from across the street, music so loud it shook his eardrums from ten paces away but so familiar it was tattooed into his bones.

Castiel stopped. The wind whistled and hummed.

“Hey, Dean,” he said. “Guess what? I finally got my driver’s license. I know, about time.”

He smiled and scuffed his boots against a stubborn shard of ice. “Better late than never, right? I think you’d be proud to know that I passed on my first try, though. I had a good teacher, I guess. You were a good teacher. Even if your taste in music sucked.”

It was so very cold today, and the wind felt like needles on his cheeks. Maybe that ice-rain warning hadn’t quite ended yet. Maybe he shouldn’t be driving in this weather. “I bought the car off of Kijiji. It has that new-car smell, though. The owner probably sprayed it to death with those air fresheners before selling it to me. It’s a Honda. Dark blue, kind of grey-ish. You’d hate it. You’d probably call it something a soccer mom would drive. It was cheap.”

Castiel took a step closer. The snow crunched with the brittle cracking of broken flower stems, long-buried and preserved in the cold.

“I drove all the way here,” he said, and his voice wavered just the slightest—exhale harshly, swipe at his nose almost angrily. “I wore my seatbelt. Adjusted the seat height. Checked my rearview mirror every time. Stopped at every stop sign even when there was no one there. I was so careful driving here, Dean, so why weren’t you? You’re always telling me to be so careful, so why weren’t you, why the fuck weren’t you, you idiot, you dumbass, I can’t—”

A noise escaped him, weak and furious. Castiel clenched his hands into fists at his sides and shut his eyes for a second, grounded by the bitterness of the wind. He opened his eyes to stare at the gravestone; etched text that he’d memorized, ran his fingers along a dozen times, memorized the whorls and runes of each crack and blemish.

He wasn’t going to hit it again. Last time he’d come off with bloody knuckles and a stain that sunk itself into the stone and couldn’t be scrubbed out.

“I still can’t listen to Led Zeppelin on the radio,” he said. “Every time I see a black car on the roads I want to turn around and follow it all the way until it stops just in case it’s you. I still can’t drive on highways.”

_I’m fine, Cas—aw, c’mon, don’t worry about me._

“You promised me. We were supposed to go to college together. I made you study for all those stupid SATs. We wrote our essays together in your backyard. You were going to drive us to all our classes so I’d never have to take another dirty, smelly bus in my life again. You promised.” His face was freezing, numb with the tears and the sleet and the stinging of the wind, harsh and ripping at his skin like a banshee.

Castiel touched the top of the stone and held it there for a moment, trying to breathe. Just trying to breathe.

“You always told me driving was fun,” he said. “It’s not. I hate it. I don’t want to be in the driver’s seat. I want you to be there instead. I think I’d rather take the bus than drive the car myself. But I drove my whole way here, so I guess I have to drive myself back home.”

He bit his tongue and swallowed hard, trying to push down the jerking, spasming pain in his chest that threatened to engulf him whole. “But I’ll drive. Just for you. All the way here and all the way home.”

He shoved his hand back into his pockets. Stepped back and felt the ache grow tenfold, like it was yanking him back like a petulant toddler. “I love you,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

Turning around (Dean wouldn’t see, now), Castiel finally let the tears break free, face twisting and chest pounding, slick and sliced open.

The first step was heavy. The rest came easier, one by one, until he walked his way out of the graveyard and back into the parking lot, where his blue-grey Honda was waiting faithfully, windows sprayed with freshly-fallen snow.

Before he entered the car, Castiel stopped for a moment with his hand on the car door. He tilted his face up into the air, the biting cold wind kissing his cheeks. He stood, and let it settle into his bones.

He opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat.

Key in the ignition. Twist.

Deep breath. He could do this.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm usually a fluff writer I swear—


End file.
